Poems that you love

[Iliveinanoodie]

Thank you to the poster who uploaded the Wendy Cope poem on another thread. I didn't get time to respond before the thread was taken down.
Anyone got any short poems that they love? Please share.

Vigil
I hold you in my arms and stroke your hair
Your head is on my shoulder, heavy with slumber.
I touch your cheek gently with my lips
And the shadow of your lashes as you dream.
When you sleep at last I will not stir,
Lest you should wake before the dawn.
No poem that I know, or symphony,

Could hold me so, my little one.
The years will fly away, you will be gone,
But I have held you here, all night long.

CAROL AN N DUFFY

A Child's Sleep

I stood at the edge of my child's sleep

hearing her breathe;

although I could not enter there,

I could not leave.

Her sleep was a small wood,

perfumed with flowers;

dark, peaceful, sacred,

acred in hours.

And she was the spirit that lives

in the heart of such woods;

without time, without history,

wordlessly good.

I spoke her name, a pebble dropped

in the still night,

and saw her stir, both open palms

cupping their soft light;

then went to the window. The greater dark

outside the room

gazed back, maternal, wise,

with its face of moon.

That has made me cry again because I know the pain that you have to have experienced to feel those words.

@Iliveinanoodie when I was a youngish teenager I bought my mum a necklace with that on. (The one on your fridge magnet)

Love The Darkling Thrush and also The Orange by Wendy Hope
gladdestthing.com/poems/the-orange

Luke Wright is my favourite poet. Hes got loads of videos on youtube and ive seen him perform at festivals etc. Really good. Hard to pick favourites but these are funny and worth a watch.

vm.tiktok.com/ZMFm4PPaT/

I love a lot of the stuff in The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy, I think so much of it is witty ands acerbic. Eurydice particularly, but it's too long to type out. Here's a short one:

Mrs Darwin:

7 April 1852
Went to the Zoo.
I said to Him -
Something about that Chimpanzee over there reminds me of you.

So far I've agreed with nearly everyone that their poems are wonderful, and many of my own favourites. The sole exception is the doggerel of "We have no time to stand or stare" by WH Davies, which makes me want to pull my hair out in frustration every time I hear it. Nails down a blackboard level of frustration.

A fun wee poem I loved when I was a kid is The Leader:

I wanna be the leader

I wanna be the leader

Can I be the leader?

Can I? I can?

Promise? Promise?

Yippee I'm the leader

I'm the leader

OK what shall we do?
Roger McGough

I also have a soft spot for The Lion And Albert , which I learnt by heart when I was 9.

Shakespeare, Donne, Keats, Yeats, Owen, WH Auden, Stevie Smith and Wendy Cope are also poets I go back to again and again.

This

Oh, I am loving this thread. Thanks everyone
@hairyunicorn, I like your style x

Stevie Smith of Waving not Drowning fame my favourite is the Singing Cat

It was a little captive cat
Upon a crowded train
His mistress takes him from his box
To ease his fretful pain.
She holds him tight upon her knee
The graceful animal
And all the people look at him
He is so beautiful.
But oh he pricks and oh he prods
And turns upon her knee
Then lifteth up his innocent voice
In plaintive melody.
He lifteth up his innocent voice
He lifteth up, he singeth
And to each human countenance
A smile of grace he bringeth.
He lifteth up his innocent paw
Upon her breast he clingeth
And everybody cries, Behold
The cat, the cat that singeth.
He lifteth up his innocent voice
He lifteth up, he singeth
And all the people warm themselves
In the love his beauty bringeth.
Stevie Smith (1902-1971)

Apparently it's used by alcoholics anonymous. I didn't know this until recently.

If I could write words. By Spike Milligan

If I could write words
Like leaves on an autumn forest floor,
What a bonfire my letters would make.

If I could speak words of water,
You would drown when I said
"I love you."

Mouthful of Forevers by Clementine von Radic. Exquisite.

" I will kiss you like forgiveness, you will hold me like I'm hope"

A cow is of the bovine ilk,
one end is moo, the other milk.

Mother any distance by Simon Armitage

Seeing as we're on MN

I bloody love Liz Berry!

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eDyvUDZPyL0

Tissue, by Imtiaz Dharker

Two which I love, the first by Adrian Mitchell
BEATTIE IS THREE
At the top of the stairs
I ask for her hand. O.K.
She gives it to me.
How her fist fits my palm,
A bunch of consolation.
We take our time
Down the steep carpetway
As I wish silently
That the stairs were endless.
©

The second by DC4
Puffins
You know what I mean,
For goodness sake,
They’re full of fish!
Incredible.
Do not underestimate Puffins.

Sniffup - awesome 😀

my absolute favourite poem ever is ‘i carry your heart with me…’ by e e cummings. we’re having it as a reading at our wedding. also love flowers by wendy cope. i remember reading it at college and it really affecting me.

also love all of dorothy parker’s poems. i bought a book of her poems at a car boot sale aged fourteen and spent many hours annotating my favourite lines. it’s still on my bedside table to this day.

I love Flowers, even though its sad.

Orkney/This Life
by Andrew Greig

It is big sky and its changes,
the sea all round and the waters within.
It is the way sea and sky
work off each other constantly,
like people meeting in Alfred Street,
each face coming away with a hint
of the other’s face pressed in it.
It is the way a week-long gale
ends and folk emerge to hear
a single bird cry way high up.

It is the way you lean to me
and the way I lean to you, as if
we are each other’s prevailing;
how we connect along our shores,
the way we are tidal islands
joined for hours then inaccessible,
I’ll go for that, and smile when I
pick sand off myself in the shower.
The way I am an inland loch to you
when a clatter of white whoops and rises…

It is the way Scotland looks to the South,
the way we enter friends’ houses
to leave what we came with, or flick
the kettle’s switch and wait.
This is where I want to live,
close to where the heart gives out,
ruined, perfected, an empty arch against the sky
where birds fly through instead of prayers
while in Hoy Sound the ferry’s engines thrum
this life this life this life.

Lowering the tone:

When I am sad and weary.
When I think all hope has gone.
When I walk along High Holborn.
I think of you with nothing on